A death in the sand, pain that lives on

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Matthew Webster, above, was released last week after 14 years in jail.Picture:Darren Pateman

A teenage girl's killer is free after 14 years. But mystery still surrounds the atrocity. John Elder reports.

Officially, the end of the road came four years ago when Robyn Leigh and Hilda Armstrong went to the Newcastle Legal Centre to meet two members of the NSW Police Integrity Commission.

The women expected to hear that the investigation into the death of Robyn's daughter, Leigh, would be reopened and the truth would be hunted down. They had been working and waiting for 10 years to hear this.

Instead, commission members laid out 60 Polaroid photographs, police portraits of teenagers who attended the party at the North Stockton Surf Club on November 3, 1989 - all of them for a time potential suspects in the murder of Leigh Leigh, 14.

Says Hilda Armstrong: "They went through the photos one by one and told us what had happened to all of them: how one girl had three children now and their father was in jail, how different ones had got into heroin or been in and out of jail. It seemed that none of their lives had come to much.

"We said, 'This isn't what we came to hear.' It's not what we wanted to hear that all those children have suffered. We wanted to know what happened to Leigh but all they could do was show us these photos. It was supposed to make us feel better, I suppose."

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Instead, the meeting only seemed to confirm what Hilda Armstrong had been saying for years, that a curse of shame hanging over all those party-goers and their parents and the police who had investigated the murder wouldn't be lifted until the truth came out.

This week, Matthew Webster was released on parole after 14 years in Parklea Prison. Webster was convicted of Leigh's murder. In February 1990, he confessed to sexually assaulting, strangling and then bludgeoning Leigh to death in the sand dunes, along from the club house where a band was playing, where an uncertain number of young people - two 10-year-olds at one point - were getting legless and stoned, some of them having sex.

Webster's confession meant witnesses were not called at his trial. Instead, a psychiatrist for the defence was called in regard to sentencing, and Detective Sergeant Lance Chaffey, who headed the investigation, read to the court a list of the facts.

To wit, Leigh was a virgin the night of a boy's 16th birthday party, an affair that had no adult supervision, save for "bouncers" Matthew Webster, then 18, and Guy Wilson, 19.

Leigh got very drunk, very quickly, on bourbon and cola. She went with a 15-year-old boy to the sand dunes and had sex with him. The boy later did community service for carnal knowledge. Whether the sex was consensual or not remains one of many points of contention.

Regardless, Leigh returned from the encounter distressed, sounding hysterical. Webster, Wilson and a number of other boys surrounded her, put her to the ground, rolled her around with their feet, spat beer on her head, one of them throwing a bottle as she made her escape. This was witnessed by other party-goers. No one came to help the girl. (Wilson was given six months' jail for common assault.)

Leigh wandered down to the beach, Webster followed. As Lance Chaffey told me this week: "He saw the opportunity."

Webster dragged her to a hollow between the sand dunes, sexually assaulted her, causing her horrible damage as she resisted, tried to have sex with her, panicked and strangled her to unconsciousness,

Then he walked some metres to retrieve a six-kilogram lump of concrete, hit her many times in the head. The first blow killed her.

That's the story on record, as told by Matthew Webster and the forensics report.

So why does the question - what happened to Leigh? - linger uncomfortably in the public imagination and in the heart of her mother Robyn?

Walk around the moodily beautiful Newcastle and ask about Leigh and most people will tell you two things that sit in conflict with each other: no one wants the business dragged up again; there remains a strong feeling that Webster didn't act alone.

Why not pursue these other people? The answer I got to this question was either a shrug or something like "Because no one is ever going to talk about it."

Indeed, ask across the water in Stockton and you'll receive a coldly polite goodbye, or a hot and bothered "f--- off."

As Greg Wendt, a journalist for The Newcastle Herald put it, "Stockton is over it."

Wendt covered the story from the first morning, when he stood over the body of a little girl lying with her legs apart, pants around one ankle, head turned to the side, mouth set in almost plaintive despair as seen on the faces of angels in old paintings, a good portion of her head turned to blood, blood spattered on to the grassy bush four metres away.

He is sympathetic to the police, feels they had a "very difficult" job because the young party-goers told so many lies, made up stories that confused the issue and wasted time, and otherwise distanced themselves and their friends from Leigh's miserable fate.

"They were worried about their parents; their parents were told there'd be adult supervision; there were people who didn't know their kids were going to Stockton," says Wendt.

From that point in the conversation, we slipped into the "word" about that night. An immense mixture of speculation, conspiracy theory, rumour, malice and various corroborated statements to police, the "word" is a troubling, baffling mess.

It includes the following - many parents told their kids to keep their mouths shut; female party-goers were silenced with threats that they too would suffer Leigh's fate; the police were running a teenage drug ring and Leigh was killed because she threatened to spill the beans; and so on.

The most popular theory is that the older boys at the party planned to get a number of "baldies" drunk and have their sexual way with them - several witnesses told police that Webster had boasted that he and others planned to get Leigh drunk and "all go through her" - and that Leigh was killed when the vile plan went awry.

But as Lance Chaffey said this week: "There was no semen found in the body, none; the boy who'd had sex with her said he didn't ejaculate. And you don't have a gang rape without semen. That's a point that's been lost along the way."

The gang rape and murder scenario birthed a book; a play; a movie based on the play; an independent report by the Newcastle Legal Centre that raises many reasonable questions; a NSW Crime Commission review that went nowhere; and a Police Integrity Commission inquiry that was heavily critical of the police investigation and holes in evidence, but in the end could only offer Robyn Leigh the faces of 60 people whose lives too had gone to hell.

But what happened to Leigh?

Robyn Leigh has apparently given up her quest, naming exhaustion and survival for letting go. She recently wrote a letter of forgiveness to Matthew Webster, wishing him well for his new life.

This clearly vexes Hilda Armstrong, whose daughter, Deanna, went to school with Robyn and granddaughter, Danielle, went to school with Leigh. "I understand her need to let go but I wonder if she hopes that (Webster) will finally talk to her and tell her what really happened. I don't believe that will ever happen," she says.

Seven years ago, when the Newcastle Legal Centre published its forensic report - concluding that more than one person was involved in Leigh's killing - Webster spoke to the media for the first time, insisting that he had acted alone.

Lance Chaffey retired from the force "a little earlier than I intended" following the Police Integrity Commission's findings - all of which he shrugs off as "nothing". He said, "I'm proud of the job we did."

How would he feel if someone else confessed to being involved, as cheering spectator or otherwise, in Leigh's death?

"I wouldn't believe it. There's nothing in the evidence to suggest it, never has been," he said.